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Deborah Jordan
Hon. Historical Research Advisor, Australian Studies, University of Queensland
'Nettie Palmer's Gift'
In 1934 Nettie Palmer edited the Centenary Gift Book, a collection of writings by and about white women in Victoria, to celebrate the Centenary of the foundation of the State. This paper will address the nature of this challenge to dominant myths of establishment in the context of contemporary views which question Nettie Palmer's commitment to feminism, recently Richard Nile (2000) and, earlier, John Docker (1974). The paper will address the nature and content of the book, its importance in Nettie Palmer's intellectual trajectory and life story and, in a different context, that of centenary sesqui-celebrations of states, of suffrage, of federation and their use by women in Australia and New Zealand. The broader context of the paper is issues of national identity, colonialism, post-colonialism and gender.
Bio: Dr Deborah Jordan's biography focussing on the first part of Nettie Palmer's life and work and entitled Nettie Palmer Search for an Aesthetic was published in 1999. She is currently working on a second volume funded by the Australia Council Literature Board. The inter-relationships of ideas, place, community and spirituality resonate with Deborah's other current projects - primarily a selection of writings by her mother There's a Woman in the House, A 1950s Journey, and Neptune's Sea Lions an autobiographical nonfiction prose book. Deborah works as a historian/Writer and has written on, among other things, Work Studies, shipwrecks, and local histories. She taught History and Peace Studies at Flinders University for many years. She is currently based at the University of Queensland in the Australian Studies Centre.
<staj@bigpond.com> <djj@acenet.net.au>